|
The causes and consequences of cane burning in Fiji’s sugar belt
John Davies
For over a century sugar has been the dominant industry of Fiji. During this time it has shaped not only the country’s economy but its history, politics, demography and labour
relations, leaving virtually no substantive facet of life untouched. While the industry doubtlessly possesses the capacity for further growth, this potential, and quite possibly the very survival of sugar
production, are subject to a multifaceted threat emanating from imminent reductions in revenue after the forthcoming demise of the Lomé Agreement, rising milling and farm costs, deteriorating productivity,
inadequate investment, poor labour relations and attitudes, uncertain land tenure and declining cane quality. These problems are widely appreciated and a strategic plan aimed at addressing them has recently been
developed.
The global agro-food complex, neoliberalism and small farmers in
Chile lessons for the Pacific Islands?
Warwick E Murray
The agricultural sector is evolving into a highly ‘globalised’ complex linking virtually every region on the earth through flows of trade and investment. A major result of
this process has been the forging of a New International Division of Labour in Agriculture (NIDLA), a central characteristic of which has been the rise in largely
non-processed agricultural exports from peripheral countries in the ‘Southern’ world to the ‘developed’ countries. This has been underpinned by the ‘going abroad’
strategy of multinational agribusiness, which has been facilitated by a widespread shift to ‘neoliberal’ economic policy in Southern countries. Within such countries,
small-holders are often encouraged to shift to monocultural production of high value commercial crops with export potential. Generally, this bears profound social and
economic consequences for individual growers and the localities they inhabit. Of particular concern is increased vulnerability to market fluctuations, technological
dependency and indebtedness. A combination of these factors has, in a number of cases, led to sales of land and proletarianisation.
With the objective of drawing lessons for Pacific Island Countries (PICs), this paper investigates the fate of fruit-growing small-holders in Chile, where the shift to
neoliberal economic policy has been profound. This has precipitated an unprecedented increase in the volume of fruit exports to ‘developed’ countries. In
general, however, the ‘new economic model’ has had a regressive distributional impact: most of those who have converted to monocultural fruit production have
found it extremely difficult to survive. The difficulties presently facing small-holders are being exacerbated by a ‘tightening’ of export company activity, as a result of
increasingly competitive global markets. Given highly asymmetric firm/farmer power relations this is leading to a considerable ‘squeeze’ of the small-holder sector.
Noting the trend towards the adoption of neoliberalism in PICs, the paper suggests a range of implications for small-farm sectors in countries currently, or potentially,
pursuing ‘neoliberal’ export-led agricultural policy. It is suggested that a concerted research effort is required to elucidate the impact of the expansion of the global agro
-food complex on island economy, society and environment. A framework for such an endeavour is outlined.
The politics of managing urban development in Pacific island states
The case of Samoa and Tonga
Donovan Storey
Although Pacific Island (PI) towns and cities rarely feature in global accounts of urbanisation, the region’s urban areas are facing comparable problems of
rural–urban drift and sustainability.1 According to the United Nations (1995:92–93) there were almost two million ‘urban’ Pacific Islanders in 1995, and this population
will grow to slightly less than five million in the year 2025. By 2015, only the Melanesian states will have more rural dwellers than urban, though with current
annual growth rates averaging 7.3%, Melanesia is experiencing one of the most dramatic rural–urban transformations of any region in the world (SPC 1996; United
Nations 1995:84–85). This rapid transformation to urban living has outpaced the capacities of PI governments to provide and plan for sustainable and productive
urban habitats. As several observers have noted, urban growth throughout the region has been accompanied by a gradual deterioration in the quality of urban life (Bryant
1993; Jones 1995:6, 14). Environmental degradation, unemployment, inadequate housing and land scarcities are indicators of emerging urban predicaments now
evident (at least in part) in all Pacific Island urban centres (Bryant 1993; Connell & Lea 1993, 1995).
Energy consumption and economic activity in Fiji
Mahendra Reddy
University of Hawaii
The high reliance on imported energy inputs by Pacific island nations has led to a search for an appropriate energy policy framework that could be utilised to reduce
this dependency. Development of such a policy framework requires a thorough understanding of the interaction of energy and energy based products in the
production processes of the economy. This study examines the pattern of energy consumption and growth in Fiji. The analysis is extended to examine how efforts to
increase energy conservation and efficiency have performed in the commercial and household sectors of Fiji’s economy. Results from the analysis are further utilised to
develop policies to enhance government's energy consumption strategy.
The marginal child
A study of socially disaffiliated children in the South Pacific
Graham G Mills
and
Manuqalo Davies
This research is about children who live apart from their natural parents. It describes their case histories, life experiences and the vulnerability of their situations. It is part
of a longitudinal research project into the sociology of childhood and child social work within the context of child care and protection issues, rights and social policy.
It is intended as a contribution to good child care practice.
Child focused research principles (Boyden & Ennew 1997) have directed the research. The data were gathered by participatory methods between 1997 and
1998 by school counsellors, child social workers, youth workers and sociologists. We focused on 30 core cases in the greater Suva area of Fiji. This work was
supplemented by comparative data drawn from elsewhere in Fiji, Nauru, Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Tonga.
The research is not intended to show the range and extent of child abuse and neglect or to compare the situation of children in the South Pacific with other societies,
although such studies have informed it. Rather, it is concerned with the specific problem of children who for whatever reason have been separated from at least one
of their natural parents and live with other family members. What follows is an attempt to locate these children theoretically as a distinct category of the child
population and to demonstrate their condition through the use of three ethnographic descriptions before presenting the results of a more detailed interview survey.
Teachers as agents of schooling and development in the South Pacific
Terence J Sullivan
Teachers, as members of a noble profession, have a twofold obligation: to contribute to the learning of the children under their care and to serve the community in its
efforts to achieve its development objectives. This paper is based on the premise that these two roles are complementary rather than conflicting. This is because the ultimate purpose of education is to develop the whole community or society through
the education of its members.
Schooling and development are very much intertwined concepts. Schooling is a major social institution, part of whose purpose is to develop people’s knowledge,
skills and attitudes. Furthermore, the quality of such personal and social development sets the foundation for the nature and quality of community and national
development that citizens and their leaders pursue at the societal level.
The quality of schooling is also dependent on the quality of the human and material resources in the community. As teachers are concerned with the ultimate educational
purpose of developing the whole community or society and maintaining the quality of schooling, they must take an active leadership role in both schooling and development.
The dialectic of power:
Implications for management accounting and control research
Ruvendra Kumar Nandan
The author is grateful to the British Council Overseas Development Assistance programme for funding this research. A three-and-a-half-year study leave granted
by the University of the South Pacific to pursue doctoral research is acknowledged with gratitude. The paper has benefited from helpful comments by Jane Broadbent, Trevor Hopper and two anonymous reviewers
This paper draws on the notion of the ‘dialectic of control’ as explicated in Giddens’ Theory of Structuration to understand the relational nature of power in
organisational interaction process. It argues that even the most subordinate agents have some ‘allocative’ and ‘authoritative’ resources at their disposal, which they can
use to influence the actions of their superiors. The manipulation or cosmetic dressing of performance indicators in the key result areas of performance, by the profit
-centre managers of the Fiji Development Bank, is analysed within the dialectic of control.
When Epeli launched this lecture series some weeks back, he also launched as a
theme of this series the idea of the ocean as a uniting force. As a region we are joined together and bound together by the ocean. I remember thinking, while
listening to Epeli’s lecture, that this applies not just the waters of the ocean, but also what they hold; in particular I thought of the tuna that whim from one end of the
Pacific to the other. And thinking in these terms, I wondered to myself, where do the boundaries of this ocean region begin and end?
The country I focus on tonight, Japan, is an island country bordering the Pacific ocean and having a fish eating tradition. It is a country that in modern times has been
the biggest fishing nation in the Pacific (and in the world) and it continues to be the largest market for the region’s fresh tuna. Because of this role, and because of the
interaction of tuna stocks in the north and south Pacific and across national boundaries, Japan can claim to also be a custodian of the resource.
But Japan is not normally regarded as part of the Oceania that Epeli referred to. In the history of Japan’s relations with the Pacific island countries, the ocean has in fact
been a contested area. And ownership of the Pacific’s tuna—so valuable to both Japan and the island states—continues to be a highly contentious issue.
Humans in the Pacific Islands
Illuminating the past and the future
Patrick D.Nunn
Humans causes change to the environment.Of that there can be no doubt.No species in our planet’s history has been so methodical in bringing about such change
.No species comes close to matching the degree of change that has been brought about in places.
Indeed many academics and students in universities elsewhere in the world regard the built environment as more familiar,more worthy of their attention,than anything
that might more logically be called ‘the natural environment’.Changes to built environments invariably involve humans because humans created and control those environments
No Pacific Studies, we’re USP
Vijay Naidu
The topic of this public lecture is an adaptation of the comedy title ‘No Sex, We’re British’. The absence of explicit sexual encounters in Bollywood movies led to the
application of this phrase to Indian cinema: No Sex, We’re Indian. If you like, this phraseology reveals what just about everybody does and enjoys—though some
seek to deny either the performance or the enjoyment, perhaps out of a false sense of modesty or sheer hypocrisy. But why extend this notion to Pacific Studies and the
University of the South Pacific (USP)? Well, it seems that USP is involved with and is doing Pacific Studies without openly laying claims to be doing it: indeed, one is
tempted to say doing it in a rather circumspect and furtive way (as befits a shameful action).
More seriously, the purpose of my talk this evening is to raise a few searching questions about the absence of systematic academic programmes in Pacific Studies
at this University. As an institution located strategically at the ‘hub of the South Pacific’ it is seemingly ideally placed, speaking both geographically and culturally, to
become a world renowned centre of Pacific Studies. Yet after almost thirty years of existence, we have still to develop such an academic programme. Indeed, in relation
to teaching about Pacific societies, cultures, economies and politics in the undergraduate programmes, the institution has in my view gone backwards.
|
